DISCUSSION of “Evidence of chaos in the rainfall-runoff process” Which chaos in the rainfall-runoff process?

Abstract In the 1980s, there were numerous claims, based on estimates of the correlation dimension, that the variability of various geophysical processes, in particular rainfall, is generated by a low-dimensional deterministic chaos. Due to a recent attempt (Sivakumar et al., 2001) to revive the same approach and with claims of an analogous result for the rainfall-runoff process, we think it is necessary to clarify why this approach can be easily misleading. At the same time, we ask which chaos is involved in the rainfall-runoff process and what are the prospects for its modelling?

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